Stop Eating Shit

May 12, 2015April 5, 2017

Nutso Nana Bread

I love nut butter. I mean I seriously fucking love that shit, I’ll eat it on almost anything, more often than not a spoon traveling the shortest possible path straight from jar to gob. It’s not my fault, it’s in my DNA. I was raised on the good stuff and probably fucking conceived on it but that’s a level of detail I have absolutely no desire to know about. Some of my earliest memories are of being perched on the kitchen bench watching my Mum make enormous batches of home roasted, hand ground peanut butter. She’d be getting a workout as she cranked that big metal bastard of a contraption, hot nuts going in the top, insanely fresh, warm ground goodness coming out the bottom.

Clearly this was a very formative part of my childhood given the nut butter obsession I have today, I even created the recipe for The Best Badass Nut Butter (aka. Nutella sans nasties) as a tribute. If you haven’t tried this one already I seriously suggest you do. Immediately. It’s life changing, I shit you not.

Although I still love making my own nut butters I’m also a sucker for trying new and interesting varieties I come across to buy – and buy them I do! Anyone looking in my cupboard may (quite fairly) suspect some sort of OCD problem based on the sheer number and variety lurking in there, but they are all my beloved nutty babies and they all have their purpose. Yes, all 12 of them currently on hand….

One of the utter gems I’ve discovered since we’ve been living in Australia is Mayvers, when it comes to nut butter these clever bastards know their shit, I know because I’ve taken it upon myself to try all of their wares and I haven’t been disappointed. My only nagging doubt is how I’m going to meet the demands of my habit when we move back to NZ, already I’m plotting about how I can get it back to the homeland in bulk. Don’t be surprised if you see me on one of those awful border patrol TV programmes looking gormless while being interrogated by customs about my three suitcases of apparently innocent spreads.

I’m a more is more kinda girl, so when I wanted to create a nut butter and banana bread it seemed silly to limit it to just one variety, fuck why not use two, three or somebody stop me – FOUR! Although one of those four is actually tahini so not technically a nut butter but I don’t discriminate in these matters, they’re all beautiful creations of clever culinary god to me. In saying that, if you don’t have such a nut butter collecting compulsion as me, feel free to just use any nut butter of your choice.

Before you get started you should know that this isn’t a super sweet loaf. I made this as a breakfast or snack loaf for my little person who already has a hardcore dried date habit so I didn’t want it to be like those slabs of banana bread you see sold in cafes which is actually just cake parading as something more healthful. If you want it to be sweeter like a more traditional banana bread then feel free to add an extra tablespoon or two of your choice of sweeter into the mix, it won’t alter the texture of the finished result.

Do this with it

As always, do like Delia and all those proper home baker types do, and get the prep done first by pre-heating the oven to 180 degrees on fanbake setting if you have it, then grease and line a loaf tin ready to roll.

Mix the banana, egg, almond milk, nut butters, vanilla and sweetener together to make a lovely sloppy but well combined mess. You can do this by hand, but because I’m all about efficiency (read: lazy fucker) I just sling it all in the blender to blitz.

Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl then pour your gorgeous gooey banana mixture in and mix it well to make sure everything is thoroughly combined.

Pour the mixture into your loaf tin (oh look, here’s one I prepared earlier!), and if you want to make it look super schmick you can tart it up by slicing a banana lengthways and laying a few of the slices along the top of the loaf (check out the pic for an infographic demonstration). If not just chuck the fucker in the oven as is. Either way it’ll want to hang in there for about 25 minutes. I used the fanbake setting which tends to cook things a little more quickly so if you don’t have that sort of space age technology available it may need a few more minutes, just do the old skewer stab and finger poke to test it. It should be a gorgeous golden brown on top and firm but bouncy to touch – like those fantasy boobs we all dream of owning.

Let it cool enough that you don’t blister your fingers getting it out of the tin or strip a layer of skin from your mouth tasting it then go wild and rip in. Serve it straight up in slices or if you want to make more of a meal of it dollop on some good greek yoghurt or coo and a spoonful of chia jam or really go to town and spread some more nut butter on that bad boy – ain’t no such thing as a nut butter overload in my world!